October The Thirteenth

Tell Any Child

Earth,
tell any child who runs you in the spring
under the froth of buds,
dreams on you under the summer sky or in
the emerald cave of hemlock,
who scuffs your autumn drifts of roadside color,
and flies with flying flakes across your breast -
Earth, tell any child
that you are his forever, that he is
the happy owner of a tilting world,
of blossoms by the bushel-basket, tons
of leaves, cloud-shadow-miles, sun, rain, and snow.
Tell him, Earth,
that he has deed and title
to beauty by the acre
anywhere he breathes!

-- Frances Frost
Photo by Allan Grant, 1953, Life magazine archives